I'm afraid we can't support translated list fields. The list options aren't translated, and the selection is stored by the literal selected string (in English or whatever) rather than a list position. It would be a lot of work to change that. I'll keep the issue open for that possibility though.

This is why I tried using language files (forum post) but that doesn't seem to be working out either :P

Not sure how to tackle this when everything else is translated to French/German except these 'values chosen from a list'.

Ok, as discussed in topic, using Comcode (technically Tempcode) instantiations of a language string for each of the list options is good workaround.

Yes, that will suffice if it saves you 16 hours of coding ;)